36 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [Jan., '13 



best known to entomologists by the Butterfly Book of W. J. Holland. 

 In convenient size and at moderate price it well fills the place of the 

 scarce and expensive work of McCook, published twenty years ago. 

 The first chapters, occupying about one-eighth of the book, treat of 

 Arachnida in general and their relations to other Arthropoda, fol- 

 lowed by an account of the orders of segmented Arachnida and tht 

 Mites. The remainder of the book is devoted to the Araneida or 

 Spiders proper. About a hundred pages are occupied with anatom> 

 and general habits illustrated by instructive diagrams and detailed 

 figures of internal organs and external parts. 



A new study has been made of the male palpi which furnishes a 

 useful key to the complications of these peculiar organs. Beginning 

 with Filistata and Eurypelma which have a simple bulb on the end 

 of the palpus terminating in a short tube, it passes to Atypus and 

 Pachygnatha in which the tube is accompanied by an appendage lying 

 parallel to it, and from these to the complicated palpi of Linyphia 

 and Epeira. In the latter the terminal ioint of the palpus is modified 

 into a hollow "cymbium" in which the palpal organ is partly enclosed 

 with sometimes a "paracymbium" often of characteristic form, articu- 

 lated at one side. The palpal organ is here shown to consist of basal, 

 middle and apical divisions each of which may develop chitinous ap- 

 pendages. The illustrations and system of names furnish means for 

 comparing palpi of different species and in different conditions. In 

 these studies of details the palpi were expanded and made transparent 

 by well known methods, but it is hoped the reader will not be led to 

 the conclusion that all palpi need to be prepared in this way for 

 ordinary comparison. 



A feature of the book is the abundance of photographic illustrations 

 both of spiders themselves and of their webs, especially the round 

 webs and those of the Cribellata. Particularly good are the webs of 

 Theridiosoma and of Epeira lahyrinthea and the enlarged threads of 

 Epeira, Amaurobius and Filistata. The webs of Linyphia and Thcri- 

 dium are less successful but there are several good ones of Agalena 

 and Tcgenaria. The spiders were photographed from life or were 

 killed by cyanide and then spread and photographed as soon as pos- 

 sible. Some of the most successful are Herpyllus ecclcsiasticus p. 318, 

 Gnaphosa gigantca on its egg cocoon p. 321, Araiiea froiidosa pp. 488 

 and 485, Aranea nordmanni p. 471, and Argiope aurantia p. 435. The 

 sea of gossamer, p. 216, and the webs of Linyphia litigiosa p. 393, show 

 the beautiful effects of large quantities of spider webs in the land- 

 scape. Plates have been entirely avoided and all the illustrations are 

 distributed through the book as near as possible to the text to which 

 they refer. 

 In a book intended for popular use, one of the things most to be 



